Microsoft's plans for a ribbon-equipped Explorer in Windows 8 have alarmed …

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When Microsoft first revealed that the Explorer file manager would be outfitted with a ribbon-style toolbar in Windows 8, responses were loud, passionate, and frequentlynegative.

The company recently described changes that it has made to Windows 8's Explorer in response to the feedback. These include some small modifications to the ribbon experience along with some other refinements of Explorer's new features. Though the changes themselves have been welcomed, the continued hostility toward Explorer's redesign remains.

Microsoft's original Explorer ribbon design

Microsoft

Since its introduction in Office 2007, the ribbon has been a polarizing user interface. The ribbon's purpose was to make a package that was feature-packed but unwieldy more approachable—to enable people to find more of those features when they wanted to use them. Microsoft says that it has broadly succeeded at this goal, and there is evidence that all but the heaviest Office users regard it as an improvement.

But those heaviest users have bemoaned the way the ribbon has moved options from familiar places, and they have criticized (especially in Office 2007) the lack of customization options. While Office 2010 has reinstated much of the configurability and customization, the other complaints remain. With the ribbon expanding into such basic software as Explorer, the old complaints are being reheated. Do they have any merit?

Relight the fire

While the Office ribbon has largely been met with acquiescence—Microsoft was resolute about not providing a "legacy" user interface in Office, giving people little option but to like it or lump it—the decision to include a ribbon in Explorer has reawakened much of the anti-ribbon feeling. Windows 8 provides a new battleground on which to repeat the conflicts inspired by Office 2007.

Adding fuel to this anti-ribbon fire was the level of explication and detail that Microsoft included in its original descriptions of the ribbon. The ribbon's design—the placement of the buttons, the grouping into different categories, the decision to place things on the default tab or some other—was fundamentally not driven by taste or aesthetics: it was driven by empirical observation.

The ribbon does include some kind of logical categorization, especially for the "contextual" tabs that aren't permanently enabled—things like the "table tools" section in Word 2010, for example, that only appears when the I-beam is in a table. Still, the most important section, the catch-all "Home" section that's displayed by default, is driven by something much more basic: how often people use the feature in question. If a feature is important, it goes in the Home section. If it isn't, it doesn't.

Microsoft collects data from a broad subset of the Windows-using community through its opt-in, optional Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP). With this data, the company knows which Explorer features people use most often, and how they access those features—whether it be through the main menu, the context menu, toolbars, or keyboard shortcuts.

This data has been instrumental in creating the Explorer ribbons, with often-used items given prominent placement. For example, in Windows 7 some of the most-used options, including copy and paste, are not found on the toolbar-like "command bar" at all. Instead, they're accessed through the context menu. Windows 8 puts them on the ribbon's Home tab, right at the left, making them the easiest-to-find buttons in the whole interface.

Data-driven design

More than the use of the ribbon itself, it is this explanation and the data used that have generated criticism. Some of that criticism is off-base: for example, in this widely Tweeted and Tumbled post, the complaint was made that some of the Home tab's features had a usage of zero percent, calling into question their inclusion. The reason these features have zero usage is because they don't exist in Windows 7, however; that Microsoft has collected no usage data about them is not at all surprising. They are, however, reasonably logical extensions of other features, so their inclusion is not indicative of any particular problem.

The ribbon and its supporting data

Microsoft

Other criticisms are more on point. Microsoft's own data shows that people use the context menus extensively and barely touch the menus and command bar. This in turn raises an implicit question: if people are finding the features on the context menus, and they are happy to use the context menus, does this not mean that the context menus are a perfectly appropriate place to stick such options? The ribbon could be seen as streamlining something that's already streamlined and accessible.

The ribbon might even be seen as illogical. There's little to link the items on the home tab, for instance, other than the fact that they're used regularly. This is not an intrinsic property of the items themselves, and it will not make sense to users of the software.

In complete agreement with the paragraph on how this makes the desktop even more disparate from Metro. It's gone to the opposite extreme especially with regards to visual noise.

MS will be absolutely slammed in the popular tech press if Metro and the desktop operate as two slapped-together entities as they are now in the release, and deservedly so. I don't think the Ribbon is an absolutely incompatible Explorer addition, but it needs *serious* tweaking in layout and operation. For example, in the DP if you have the ribbon minimized and click a file near the top of the Explorer window and then decide you want to manipulate it with the ribbon, the ribbon obscures the file when you click the arrow to reveal it - it should move the content it's blocking down smoothly.

To me, the sudden adoption of the Ribbon is a sign that Microsoft is making a huge tablet push, and they need interfaces that can work with touchscreens. The "Move To" and "Copy To" buttons pictured in the 'Data Driven Design' screenshot? Not really useful if you've got context menus (which are not very discoverable/usable on touchscreens), but they're awesome if you're tapping files left and right.

With nearly all laptop screens having moved to a widescreen format, the ribbon really just eats up screen space. I don't mind it so much on a large desktop monitor but I really can't stand it on a 1366x768 screen.

I've been running WDP as my primary OS ever since it came out, (with metro disabled of course), and I dont see anything wrong with the ribbon.It could be a little smaller thats all.I love the "mount" feature for ISOs, and the graph for file copy is really cool.Overall the WDP is almost as solid as W7.The only problems that I found are the inability to use QuickSync in Badaboom and occasional hickups with some DVD burning software, nothihg really major.WDP even correctly identifies SSD as a primary drive and schedules for it TRIM instead of defrag, amazing!.

To me, the sudden adoption of the Ribbon is a sign that Microsoft is making a huge tablet push, and they need interfaces that can work with touchscreens. The "Move To" and "Copy To" buttons pictured in the 'Data Driven Design' screenshot? Not really useful if you've got context menus (which are not very discoverable/usable on touchscreens), but they're awesome if you're tapping files left and right.

The ribbon's been around a while, since before tablets became the "next big thing." The ribbon was designed to make the bajillion features within Office (and other programs) easier to access, it wasn't a response to touch based interfaces. For that purpose, making things easier to find, it works great. It's just kinda ugly, and people don't like it because it's different than what came before. After you use it a while, it works.

One job I have forces me to sometimes use Office apps with this ribbon UI and I absolutely hate it. Finding the right tab and scanning through all those icons is far less efficient than simply pulling down text menus. And that's not getting into all the on-screen clutter those taps and icons create.

Interestingly, I talked to an executive in Microsoft's online help department and he admitted that he hated it for about two years. My own suspicion is that someone in the UI department thought it'd be a good way to merge a mouse and touch screen interfaces. That's about the only way to explain something this awful. That and the silly "icons make things easy" school that's been around since the late 1980s.

The best way to look at the ribbon is as the Edsel of user interfaces: ugly, bloated and wasteful.

In this analysis I find it surprising that there is no mention of one important reason behind the Ribbon - touch screen users. The Ribbon is actually usable without constant zooming and unzooming on a touch screen, which I imagine is part of the rationale behind this, since Explorer will be widely used by both touch and non-touch end users.

So we have an article about a feature that they put in, got feedback on, then listened to the feedback and defaulted back to the old view...and somehow that's a bad thing? New features for those that want it, hidden for those that don't. Seriously, is there anything Microsoft can do right that won't draw criticism?

With nearly all laptop screens having moved to a widescreen format, the ribbon really just eats up screen space. I don't mind it so much on a large desktop monitor but I really can't stand it on a 1366x768 screen.

You are the one that bought this low screen resolutions, and 16:9 aspect ratio monitors and laptops. By buying this laptop, you just said to the OEM: "I want and like this screen resolution and aspect ratio, please make more". And this is why we don't have nice things anymore.. people just run an buy the cheapest price product over anything else... We have tablets with IPS screens and super high resolution for their size... and laptops.. we going with crappier screens and lower resolutions.. Next generation, I won't be surprised if we have 800x600 stretch on a wide screen 16:9 screen.

Buy 16:10, support 16:10, as more people get them, the shift will change, price will drop, and it won't be a concern. The only reason why 16:9 gain moment is because of Sony super aggressive marketing on it's HDMI cable, which was limited to 1920x1080, instead of 1920x1200 as the standard was... and now everything in HD is in 1920x1080, instead of 1920x1200 via cheaper cable (DVI or even better DisplayPort).

I had already made up my mind that I and my company will skip this version of Windows. So why would I care about how M$ fouls up their system. I use as little M$ software as possible. The only exception, outside of the operating system for some computers, is the use of Office 2003. Why Office 2003? No ribbon bar needlessly cluttering up the screen and confusing the users. I will probably go to LibreOffice.

Go ahead M$, make the IBM mistake and dictate how users will use their computers.

With nearly all laptop screens having moved to a widescreen format, the ribbon really just eats up screen space. I don't mind it so much on a large desktop monitor but I really can't stand it on a 1366x768 screen.

You are the one that bought this low screen resolutions, and 16:9 aspect ratio monitors and laptops. By buying this laptop, you just said to the OEM: "I want and like this screen resolution and aspect ratio, please make more". And this is why we don't have nice things anymore...

Explorer's only real purpose is to navigate through folders and manipulate the contents. Most of what people do in it will be done with the mouse and keyboard controlls, so the ribbon is just wasting screen real-estate - sort of an issue considering win8's supposed to be usable on devices with smaller screen sizes.

I don't see what everyone's so fed up about - I like the Ribbon - think of it as a menu system with bigger, more easily distinguishable targets due to the non-regular arrangement of icons (this analogy works best if you leave the Ribbon collapsed, which will be the default in 8). The feedback on the Office Ribbon boils down to "most people like it and think it makes things easier to use, except for the people who were used to the old GUI, and are now pissed because everything moved"

That said, while I think that the changes to the desktop environment are evolutionary and good, the point about there being an interface clash between old-style desktop apps and new-style Metro apps is a good one - I can see them deprecating the old app model for Windows 10 or so (fixing this problem), but they might hold on for longer. Part of me thinks they'll reveal a Metro-esque skin for the desktop for release to manufacturing, but maybe not (given the tweaks they made to the current skin for 8)

The one explorer change I'd be making would be an 'I'm not an idiot' option that stops hiding hidden files and folders and shows the file extensions. In fact, file extensions should be on by default and it boggles my mind that the default is to hide them.

I had already made up my mind that I and my company will skip this version of Windows. So why would I care about how M$ fouls up their system. I use as little M$ software as possible. The only exception, outside of the operating system for some computers, is the use of Office 2003. Why Office 2003? No ribbon bar needlessly cluttering up the screen and confusing the users. I will probably go to LibreOffice.

Go ahead M$, make the IBM mistake and dictate how users will use their computers.

Anybody that uses "M$" in a post pretty clearly isn't mature enough to manage anything in any company with any kind of significance.

Anybody who brings LibreOffice in a managed corporate environment is a cheapskate/religious nut who is probably doing long-term harm to their corporate masters.

I have never liked toolbars. Most of the icons are too small to be meaningful, and have no description, so you end up hovering over each one to see what they are supposed to do. In practice I have found that I learn keyboard shortcuts for things I do a lot, and use the menu for things I use less frequently and the toolbar just sits there taking up space. The only time I use it is for drop-down menus other widgets that can't fit into a menu, and would otherwise have to be put into a dialog box.

I like the ribbon. Unlike toolbars it can be minimized. Unlike menus it is big enough for widgets that you can interact with, not just buttons/menu items to click. The larger icons and full text make it more discoverable than both menus or toolbars. When it first made it's appearance in Office, I had issues with how they chose to re-organize things, and the fact that it wasn't customizable, but the later has been fixed and the former isn't an inherent problem with the ribbon.

I'm really liking what I see in the Windows 8 file explorer. The Vista/7 explorer was a step backwards in many ways, and I'm glad that they are re-exposing all the old functionality.

one thing the ribbon does is make it easier to discover options. having it minimized by default might not be such a big deal because once a user clicks on that home tab, or a contextual tab like Picture Tools, they'll realize it's the place to go when you need to get something done but have no idea how to get it done--at least this is how I've observed people using Word. clicking through tabs with icons and text is friendlier than reading through a bunch of drop down menus

that said, I think the ribbon is ugly and I keep it minimized by default but I do have regular uses for it ... run command prompt/powershell as admin, on the view tab I often change icon size (for thumbnails) and show/hide hidden items... on the manage tab, manage libraries... and I regularly click in the search field to expose the search controls (e.g. search subfolders, search by "kind" etc). everything else is done by right-click menus or keyboard shortcuts

the quick access toolbar is underrated--on that I have paste, new folder, select all, play, and play slideshow pinned... the first 3 come in handy when I don't feel like using keyboard shortcut

The one explorer change I'd be making would be an 'I'm not an idiot' option that stops hiding hidden files and folders and shows the file extensions. In fact, file extensions should be on by default and it boggles my mind that the default is to hide them.

Considering nowadays less IT illiterate people are using desktop OS, I agree that file extensions should return as default.

I often wonder why OS designers these days do not think about providing easy access to "Advanced Settings" button so that power users can config their workflow to suit them best.

I am of mixed opinion. On one, the ribbon haters need to get a life and realize that astoundingly, MS has FACTS on their side about how much better the ribbon interface actually is. On the other hand, the Ribbon predates Metro, and conflicts as an interface.

NegativeZero, I would prefer we got rid of file extensions entirely as the legacy crap they ate and let file metadata handle things.

I really have no idea what the complaining is about - I love the ribbon and all the users I work with (once they really start using it) love it as well. Everything is well organized, and all your common tasks are visible at all times as opposed to hidden within menus.

It is much easier to show people how to do something when you do not have to navigate through menus. Not to mention its really great to find all the "hot-keys" you can use to access your most commonly used functions - press the alt key to see the hot keys for each portion of the ribbon, and the alt again to see the hot keys for all the functions within each ribbon pane...

On the other hand, the Ribbon predates Metro, and conflicts as an interface.

There will be a metro file browser as well. MS has made it clear from their previews that they have no interest in a merged Tablet and Desktop UI, so I am perfectly fine with pretending that Metro doesn't exist.

I use Outlook and Excel extensively at work, and as of right now, we use Office 2003. However, by the end of the year, we will be migrating to Office 2010, and I shudder to think how it will go over in an office full of users with very limited computer knowledge such as mine. I've messed around on 2007 a little bit, and I'm already concerned that going from 2003 to 2010 is going to hamper my normal flow of work. I don't doubt there's improvements in there, but it's all about adaptation time. I know I can, but I have a feeling most of my time will be helping others figure out where crap went.

Honestly, I don't understand MS's logic to totally change explorer in every new release. In Vista and 7, they went as far as to hide these menus from sight to move people away from using them. Now they return and totally change. I think at some point, 99% of users reach a certain level of proficiency, and these changes will only upset them, resulting in Vista-like revolts. No Start button? New menus? There's a reason Apple has not changed the GUI that much--they feel that it's a winning design (whether it is or not is not the point), and that drastically changing it will only sabotage users. Where Apple's approach looks like refinement, MS looks like they are guessing. The way control panel has changed certainly suggests that MS just can't agree on a design philosophy. Right or wrong, they just need to commit to something. If that's Ribbon, then dammit, make the ribbon standard everywhere.

In this analysis I find it surprising that there is no mention of one important reason behind the Ribbon - touch screen users. The Ribbon is actually usable without constant zooming and unzooming on a touch screen, which I imagine is part of the rationale behind this, since Explorer will be widely used by both touch and non-touch end users.

In short, I don't think the ribbon is much good as a touch-screen UI, although it depends on which ribbon, exactly, you're talking about.

Consider the Office 2010 ribbon. To my mind, this is the pinnacle of ribbon design. I think the "backstage" area is a smart way of handling things like print preview, options and configuration. But it introduces a lot of problems for touch:All the things I've boxed in red are troublesome, especially icons such as Move and Rules, which don't function as "buttons" but simply emit menus. The worst of all is the "Manage Quick Steps", which is simply tiny.

The ribbon control that's built in to Windows doesn't have quite so many capabilities, I don't think. It has no backstage (instead, it drops down a conventional, albeit somewhat oversized, menu), and I don't think that it allows anything like the "Manage Quick Steps" button (though I could be wrong; I've not examined the API or its capabilities in any great depth).

But it still has plenty of touch accessibility problems. The third-height buttons, the buttons-that-are-menus, checkboxes, and so on.

A kind of pared back ribbon--just the tabs and the big buttons--would be reasonably touch-friendly. But the ribbon-as-actually-exists isn't, in my experience.

On the other hand, the Ribbon predates Metro, and conflicts as an interface.

There will be a metro file browser as well. MS has made it clear from their previews that they have no interest in a merged Tablet and Desktop UI, so I am perfectly fine with pretending that Metro doesn't exist.

having already deplyed 8 alpha to a couple test computer in our environment I agree You can turn all the metro stuff off or keep it on... You can deploy win8 just like 7, and application compatibility (as far as I can tell) is not really an issue. To be honest its a DAMN stable release of a non-RC operating system. Actually windows in general has been rock solid as of late (win7 SP1, etc) I cant even remember the last time I had a crash...